


Steel and Steel

by AotA



Series: Steel and Steel [1]
Category: Ghost in the Shell, Stealth (2005), Transformers (Bay Movies)
Genre: Age Difference, Air Force, Alien Invasion, Alien Psychology, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Future, Amnesia, Androids, Army, Artificial Intelligence, Cyborgs, Death, Destruction of Earth, Dysfunctional Family, Enemies to Friends, Explicit Language, Faked Death, Family, Family Fluff, Former Evil Agent, Guns, Hive Mind, Humans are Aliens, Hunter-Killers, Infectious Evil, Insanity, Language Barrier, Military, Nanite-borne Viruses, Navy, Near Extinction, Not Everyone Is What They Seem, Nuclear Fallout, Nuclear Warfare, Post Apocalyptic Earth, Psychological Horror, Reprogramming, Robots, Snipers, Soldiers, Space Exodus, Space Flight, Spaceships, SpecOps, Stand-In God, Technology Loss, Unwilling Evil, War, War Era, mama bear - Freeform, new religion, test tube babies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-28
Updated: 2013-05-18
Packaged: 2017-12-06 19:28:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 16,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/739276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AotA/pseuds/AotA
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After spending centuries locked in endless wars that savage its surface, the survivors, and the Earth itself, finally begins to recover and find a measure of healing and peace... only for the Decepticon threat to rear its ugly head. The natives are pissed off in an "Oh you did <em>NOT</em> just do that." way. And then they bring out the pitchforks.</p><p>A non-chronological flash fic series where humans aren't squishy anymore and have fought the Decepticons alone for years before they even knew what "Autobots" were.</p><p>This is a fusion mashup fic rather than a crossover in the strictest sense.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've wanted to do a Transformers where humans aren't necessarily a _match_ for Decepticons but are advanced enough that they can fight them off, and have been for a couple years before the Autobots even show their faces

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A coincidental meeting between brothers of two races. One Cybertronian, and one a warrior from a race that Cybertron had met once but vanished after the war between factions left that race's homeworld a burning cinder in space.

"It's a hunter-killer," the mech murmured in surprise, watching the four-legged serpentine frame whip by at speed with a sinuous twisting before ripping into the Decepticon rogues. "Oiiiii! Slag-faces! We've got a hunter-killer here! Hunter-killer!" he cried with vicious glee and the cry was taken up by his comrades.

"Hunter-killer! Hunter-killer! Hunter-killer!"

The battlefield was flooded with spilled coolant, lubricants, and energon, making an abstract artwork of glowing fluids.

Optics were bright when the last rogue was crushed and the hunter-killer eeled forward, helm held low, then high on that long, proud neck as sharp battle-ready points slowly slicking back to look more like fur than the armor piercing quills that they became when lit with a bit of charge. Patches of bare armor marked where they had been put to good use and the long, whipcord tail was practically entirely bare, smooth, hexagonal etched metal.

Green optics moved from one mech to the next, fields cautious as the hunter-killer tasted their fields and IFF, noting the red sigil they were marked with one and all.

"Autobots. It has been a long time since I have seen Autobots." The crest of spines protecting the more vulnerable joints along the hunter-killer's helm ruffled.

The hunter-killer's voice was a surprise--the last time they had known them, the hunter-killers had not been capable of speaking fluent Cybertronian.

"It has been a long time any Autobot has seen one of your kind as well," the mech said gruffly, "Quite a surprise you gave us."

Specialized denta modified to grip and cut through Cybertronian armor were bared and the mech only belatedly remembered that to hunter-killers that was not a threatening gesture and was supposed to be friendly even as it chilled the energon in his lines. Energon cultists... Urgh.

"There will be more," the hunter-killer said, padding closer as branching razor edged bits lazily transformed the hunter-killer from a razor edged deathtrap of stabbing points and cutting blades to a more touch friendly shape, "We are ready."

The mech smiled back, closed mouthed to not show off his own denta, before what the hunter-killer said finally parsed, "Wait. Ready?"

"It was decided that if the war was still going on when we were ready, we would fight," the hunter-killer said, coming to a stop in front of the mech, "So we will fight."

The mech was surprised as long unused protocols had him stretching out his hand toward the being, an odd gesture that had his hand rotated nearly vertical with his radial distal phalanx pointed upward, the rest adducted and pressed together into a single block.

The hunter-killer's helm tilted and the being laughed, flashing sharpened denta, before lifting a heavily clawed limb that shifted shapes into something that more resembled hand and matched the gesture, hands slotting together and gripping firmly, moving a short distance up and down before they both released, "My name is Will."

"Ironhide," the mech returned, "Nice to meet you."

" _Ironhide_?" Will asked, "the same Ironhide from the Ark?"

"You know me?" Ironhide asked.

"Know you?" the hunter-killer barked a laugh, "I pulled your aft out of that wall you'd been embedded in for who knows how long!"

"Wait," Ironhide held up a hand, "You're _Will_ , Will?" He scanned the sleek hunter-killer again but the body was so different... "I didn't recognize you."

"Heh," Will's helm lowered as fangs flashed again, "Well that's what a bunch of rebuilds get you when you keep getting told that your body's too outmoded to function properly in society anymore and you need to upgrade. Again. I didn't recognize you either, Ironhide. What's with the red?"

"Just felt like a change. How many rebuilds have you had? I mean, quadrupedal? Whatever happened to walking on two pedes?" Ironhide asked.

Will flicked a hand-pede dismissively, mobile audial cones flicking forward, "Meh. Lost count. Wasn't that important. And the quadrupedal frame's a damn sight more efficient when fighting than the old slag I had way back when. This is the current hunter-killer frame. Quick. Smooth. Deadly. Best of the best for the best of the best."

"That thing is a death trap," Ironhide said, moving a finger out to touch a shoulder guard that when extended was a vicious forward pointing blade made to cut through enemies as Will ran by, "way too many blades, but then there is no such thing as overkill when it comes to hunter-killers, right?"

"You remembered!" Will chuckled, "It's still true."

Ironhide looked up and saw the mechs that had gathered a short ways away. Giving a grunt he asked, "Want me to introduce you?"

Will followed his gaze, "Sure. Why not?"

"Come on then," Ironhide stumped towards the gathering, Will right behind him, "Hey slag-faces! I've got someone I'd like to introduce you to! It's an old friend of mine!"

"An old friend?" one of the young war frames asked, "You knew hunter-killers?"

"This is Will," Ironhide said, "And yea, we met all the way back in the orn when they didn't even know that Autobots even existed. Pit of a way to meet a new race--after they've been fighting off Decepticons for quite a while."

"What Ironhide doesn't like to admit," Will said, "was that he was stuck helm first into the wall of his ship, big black aft poking out like a particularly ugly wall decoration at the time when I dragged him out."

Ironhide hissed static at the hunter-killer as the rest of the mechs laughed but he was too cheered by the unexpected reunion to take it too badly.

"I have plently of blackmail on you myself," Ironhide grumped, "so you better watch it!"

"Just try me," Will said with another denta-baring smile.

Ironhide growled, but the familiar, wild, devil-may-care attitude warmed the his spark. Ahhh... There was his old friend. One he had thought had been long dead and missed with all his spark when his hunter-killer brother's race had vanished among the stars when the war with the Decepticons had left their homeworld a burning cinder.

"Hey, Will to Ironhide, anybody in there?" green optics were staring into his and Ironhide felt distinctly embarrassed.

"Dah!" Ironhide jerked back and had to make himself ignore Will's laughter and frown at him, "What?"

"Are you going to introduce your fellow Autobots?" Will prodded.

"Oh!" Ironhide felt utterly scatter-processored, "Right. This is Bitshift, our hacker of the bunch, Pummeler, an itty bitty baby war-spark," Pummeler's protestation went ignored, "Blue Watch, affectionately known as Batch by some is security a la Red Alert if you remember him, but a lot more sane, and White Noise, our communications temp while Soundcloud is down." Having gone through the handful that were physically present, Ironhide listed some of the other mechs that Will would be meeting if he stuck around, "And then there's Hollowpoint, Buffer, Downlink, Nightsong, Combine, Deflector..."

"I get the idea," Will said, "Lots of people to meet."

"I thought hunter-killers were squishies," Pummeler declared with all the tact of the newly sparked and children everywhere, "You look like a mech. A weird mech, but a mech. It makes a lot more sense than squishies having done all those things."

Ironhide covered his face, beseeching Primus to save him from the sparklings.

"Squishies?" Will said, eeling closer to the young war-spark and peering at him, "You mean humans right?"

"Yeah. Squishies," Pummeler said.

Will unceremoniously bashed his helm against Pummeler's, sending the mech crashing to the ground on his aft. Will loomed over the tactless mech, considering.

Ironhide quickly held up a hand to halt the others from doing anything to intervene. Quickly comming them to tell them to let it play out. Will wouldn't hurt him besides maybe scuffing him up a bit. Might do the fractious spark good.

"I'm pretty sure you meant human. We like being called _human_ ," Will repeated to the dazed mech, "We haven't been 'squishy' since before we met Cybertronians. We _don't_ like being called squishies. It would be smarter for you to not be rude, don't you think? Then maybe you won't get your helm bashed in again. Get a good lesson out of this little inter-species interaction of ours, hey? Some _humans_ won't be so nice about it. Got it? Good."

Ironhide stifled an guffaw at the delivery while Pummeler muttered dazed assents.

Oh _Will_... It's so _good_ to have you back.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They were the best of the best and they had another mission to take control of a crashed ship occupied by a bunch of the toasters that they made it their job to kill as many as possible. Finding what they did inside the odd ship was beyond even their wildest imaginations.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This series isn't really going to be in any sort of order. I'll think up a scenario and write it. This one is non-squishy!humans meet the autobots! Enjoy your long!chapter!

Will crouched, waiting for the results of the scan to come back with all the ease of a soldier who had done it many many times before. Being too risky to attract the wrong kind of attention with comm chatter, he raised his hand, making signals where his teammates could see before he raised all his fingers and started counting down holding his fist upright for a second before slashing downward.

They charged, the feet of their heavy armored frames pounding against the decking as they all out ran for cover, praying that the scramblers the Brain Trust had come up with for this mission had gotten it right.

If they had gotten it wrong, then they were dead or worse.

Luckily, they had gotten it right, and all the shots went awry, except for a stray shot winging against his helm just as Will rolled behind a bit of cover.

Another scan, more dodging enemy shots, more scans, more dodging.

They worked their way deeper into the strangely rounded ship's corridors. Strange for aliens anyway. There was a distinct lack of pointiness and protruding structures that they had seen on all the other ships they had taken.

Will paused as his scan came through and came back with nothing. Huh. He scanned again to verify. "Hey, can one of you try scanning? I'm getting nothing and I kind of doubt that those bozos would just leave us alone after we got in this far."

A moment before Epps piped in, "Nope. Nada." There was no answer then...

"Wait..." Fig said, "Change the scan for this range." He chattered the range, "Try it again."

Will did and jolted at what he was picking up, "What the fuck is that?"

"It ain't those bastards we've been fighting," Epps said, "Totally different ripple signature."

"It's the same species though," Fig pointed out.

"But our buddies out there aren't coming in here," Will said speculatively, "I have to wonder if there's something going on here."

"Oh man... That's touble talking..." Fig muttered, fingering the cross that was embossed between the plates of his chest armor.

"...Will?" Epps asked.

"If they're afraid of whatever is in there, then it might give us an advantage over the enemy," Will said.

"And what if whatever those monsters are afraid of is even _worse_ , huh? What then?" Epps argued.

"We won't know unless we check it out," Will said, "There's gotta be a reason that the toasters're leaving whatever is in that room to rust."

"I was right," Fig mumbled but dropped his hand down and held it at a ready.

"I'll go first," Will said, "You guys've got my six."

The team nodded.

Cautiously, Will stood from his crouch and prowled forward, ready to duck and roll away from anything that might attack him.

Nothing did.

Will stood in front of the door and waved his team forward to take up positions beside the door.

Will pinged the door with the codes they'd had to adjust to work for this particular ship, and wasn't it odd that a ship that had toasters with different ripples signatures also have different codes for manuevering through the ship that had such a different aesthtic from the norm?

Will tensed as the door opened and nothing happened.

The room was dark.

He took cautious steps into the room, flinching when lighting flickered on, slowly brightening the room as one fixture after another lit.

He stopped, taking it in. He lowered his rifle. "Clear." He took a step closer, not really believing what he was seeing.

The others bustled in behind him, rifles still raised until they came to a screeching halt, seeing exactly what he was.

"Holy _shit!_ " Epps hissed.

Screens that covered an entire wall were flickering on, blue reticles tracking the movement of all their enemies with a flashing of alien glyphs that they had learned basically spelled out "warning" alongside a running string of more unfamiliar ones that kept changing. More glyphs were attached to most of the reticle with a glygh that they had learned meant "designation" or "name" from what they could understand.

The find was _gold_.

There was just one problem.

The room was littered with the bodies of robots... and they weren't dead. The ripple had said as much.

Will took a few cautious steps toward the chair where one of them slumped against the control panel, cables hooked into its frame at a million different points. He blinked, leaning closer. Was that...?

"Hey, these guys don't have that stupid purple mark on them!" Fig called out, giving voice to Will's thought. Fig was looking at the helm of a yellow colored toaster though, "They've got some sort of different shaped red one."

"This one's got the purple mark, but he's dead," Epps said, looking at a pair of entangled bodies, one of which had a massive blade stuck through the chest into the point that they had learned early on was a one hit kill if you could get through all the blasted armor.

"So... Reds kill Purples?" Fig asked.

Will hiked a thumb at the displays, "Considering the alert, I'm betting that Purples kill these Red guys too."

"Huh," Epps said, rounding a dog-pile to see another body. Only this one was in the most awkward position _ever_. "Oh god, get a load of this!" He sniggered.

A black armored toaster was stuck helm first through the wall so only its aft and legs were visible.

Will snickered, "How the hell did it manage that?"

"I'm betting the crash," Epps answered, "and considering it's still 'alive' after that it's a pretty damn lucky sonofabitch, don't you think?"

"Lucky," Fig said, "...Right. What are we going to do about all... this?" The man waved his arms, indicating the room at large.

"I say we get one of these things running again and get our answers," Will said, crossing his arms.

"Are you crazy?!" Epps practically exploded then stopped and held up a hand, "You know I love you like a brother, but don't answer that man. Just... try to translate the crazy to something the rest of us can understand, 'kay?"

Will held up a finger, "One. Just get one back up enough to try to talk to. Our team can handle one measly disoriented tin can, don't you think?"

"...I don't like that you've infected me with enough of your crazy that that actually made sense," Fig said flatly.

"If we get the same attitude as our 'buddies' then we can just trash them, but don't you find it suspicious that whoever or whatever _these_ guys are, they have a different kind of ship than all the ones that the 'Purples' have, different markings, different ripples, hell look at the _colors!_ " Will stabbed his finger around the room, "White and black, red and blue, red and white, freaking _yellow_ for two of 'em, blue, _pink_ , green, red, gold, god damn neon green. Do you see what I am getting at here?"

All the bastards that they had tangoed with up to this point tended to be bare metal and the couple silvers scattered about the room were silver of the shiny car variety.

 _Something_ was up.

Both Fig and Epps looked unhappy but they got it. Epps gave a low whistle, "Guess we go for it then. Damn." He looked around the room, "Which one are we going to pick? Are we going to do fucking eeny meeny miny moe or what?"

"Computer guy is out," Will said, "Wall guy is out. So is our friend skewering the Purple over there. The ones in the piles are out unless you _want_ to try dragging them apart right now..."

"That leaves red and blue, the smaller yellow, and one of the silvers," Fig tallied up.

Will looked back at red and blue and voiced something that they were all thinking, "...How about _not_ that one?"

Red and blue was one _damn_ big example of the species, nearly as big as the fucker in charge of their enemy. The big guys tended to be the ones in charge and therefore tended to have more info but they also tended to have fire-power out the ass which they didn't want to deal with without more than just the three of them.

"Yeah. That leaves claws and no-claws," Fig said, "If you ask me, I vote no-claws."

"Same," Epps and Will said at the same time, glancing at each other.

"We're decided then," Will said, heading over toward the smaller yellow robot.

They were going to be _fixing_ one of the toasters? Yeah. Hell had just officially frozen over.

Fig muttered imprecations in Spanish under his breath as he knelt by the yellow robot's side, running scans more in depth than anything either Will or Epps could manage with his newer, upgraded sensor suite. Neither of the hunter-killers envied him for the way he had ended up with it though. Damn tin cans... They much preferred going though the normal upgrade cycle even if it meant they didn't always wind up with the cutting edge stuff. It went without saying that they stayed away from the bleeding edge because of one thing: _bugs_. They'd let the Brain Trust figure out the bugs before they put their bodies and lives in the hands of potentially buggy hardware or software.

"Alright," Fig finally said, "Gonna open this baby up." So saying, he placed his hands against yellow armor and began the long process of getting access to the guy's "vitals" using a series of codes another team had gotten out of the enemies heads before they'd binned them.

It was half an hour later that Fig sat back, flexing his fingers to redistribute the lubrication in the joints. "Huh. I got nada," Fig said, "So either they've changed the codes or this guy's never had the same codes as our little friends."

Will grumbled, "It's times like these that make me wish we were smaller so we could just access things manually..."

Epps scoffed, "And give up your armor? You were _born_ to be a hunter-killer. You'd never give it up."

Will sighed, "I just want to hold my baby girl for the first time. It's just not the same talking to them over vid-comm... It sucks that I was called out here while my little Belle was getting ready to decant."

Fig made awwwing noises as he returned to working on getting into their chosen victim.

Will raised his clawed, barbed, weaponized hands, "I mean, how the hell am I supposed to hold her? These hands aren't..."

Epps sighed, "Dammit Will..."

"I'm serious!"

"Gloves man?" Epps offered, "I know the wifie's gotta not mind those hands otherwise she'd never let you touch her delicate little frame in the first place."

"Delicate little nothing," Will snorted, "I've got a _real_ wife, thank you very much. Sarah... My beautiful deadly hawk eyed Lady. I'll never forget how beautiful she looked when she was shooting down those bastards in Egypt." The hardened hunter-killer had the sappiest expression on his face as he sighed a lovesick sigh.

Fig made gagging noises and Epps made warding gestures with his hands, "Okay. We know you love your wife. Now enough of the shmoopyness. I'd go with gloves, or ask around to see if they're willing to retrofit you with standard hands that you can have swapped out when you go on missions or something."

Will made a face, "Weird."

"S'just body parts," Epps defended.

"No offense to you, Bobby, but I prefer to keep what body parts I have connected to me where they're supposed to be," Fig interjected, silencing his teammates. Fig had very good reason to feel that way after all.

The pair standing guard gave each other glances that agreed to change the subject. "So, Fig," Will said, "What do you plan to do once this is over? Hang out with more of your momma's gators?"

"How many times have I told you bolts for brains that it's not just alligators? Momma's got an entire biome t'look after."

"I just want you to know that your momma's gotta be the most badass chick I've heard of," Epps said, "Seriously badass."

Will chuckled, "So do you know how many clocks she's cleaned defending her territory, Fig?"

"I don't want to know," Epps held his hands to his head in the functionally obsolete sign language of "not listenting," "Lalalalalala!"

Fig and Will both snorted, the latter elbowing Epps, "You just don't want to have your kill count be shown up by a stay-home wife who isn't a hunter-killer and doesn't want to be."

"Damn right!" Epps said, "Badass chick or not, I'd prefer to stay assured in my capabilities as a toaster killer."

It was said so seriously, but it brought to mind a completely different image to mind.

"Badass" Momma Figueroa vs hunter-killer Robert Epps: who can destroy the most bread machines in under an hour? Go!

Fig looked up from his work, met Will's optics, and after a short moment, they both cracked up.

"Hey!" Epps protested, "What the hell's so funny?"

The pair just sniggered.

Still laughing under his breath, Fig decided to ignore the two and focus on his work instead so he would stop getting so distracted by their banter. After another hour, his focus was rewarded and with a "Hah!" Fig made a triumphant pump of his fist and armor slid open, exposing the complicated internals that looked nothing like what the hunter-killers knew their own internals looked like. Their toasters were made to sustain the funky radioactive zappy thingies in their chests behind layers of armor and humans squirelled away their delicate organic bits behind decuple redundancies and layers of armor.

Will and Epps both crowded around making interested noises, "Alright, here's the tricky part. Gonna jack in." He grabbed his hack guard and clicked it into the jacks at the back of his neck then motioned to the back of the guard, "Backup?"

"Don't worry, Fig," Epps said as he pulled hack guard and unwound the accompanying cable from it as Will did the same, "Your puny brain is in good hands."

"That makes me feel _so_ much better," Fig snarked.

Will and Epps connected the cables to the aux ports on either side of the guard and checked the connection. "I'm good." "Same here." "Yep."

"Alright," Fig said, "Hold onto your braincases, I'm jacking in."

_The hack cable and hack guard had been an adaption to the existing virus scrubbers for when some maniac went crazy and tried to deactivate the cybernetic components in people, deciding that the human race was dying and "needed to be brought back to nature." The attempt obviously failed, but had necessitated the use of scrubbers that could catch the virus in the interrum before upgrades could be made to protect their cybernetic components, because, depending on the level of cyberization, the virus that focused on deactivating non-organic parts would _kill_ the host._

_The hack guard was a decendant of that hysteria among other incidents as humanity moved from beings of flesh to beings that were synthetic as much as they were natural, to a people that existed as a web of minds in the cyberworld while their cybernetic bodies went about their business simultaneously... But then... Humanity was fighting for their very right to exist against a race that was many steps more advanced than them and they strugged to hold against the armies of an enemy they hadn't been expecting and didn't know anyting about or why they were attacking._

"I'm in!" Fig said, unnecesary, but it was a win and they hadn't yet been swatted, "Oh, baby Jesus. This guy went down _hard_." With his teammates watching over his shoulder, ready to react, Fig checked the levels to make sure that nothing was physically wrong that they could fix that would wind up frying their boy's processor when they went to "wake" it up and waste all Fig's hard work. "Checks done..." Fig hesitated, "Sure we're gonna do this, guys? Last chance."

"We're sure," Will said, Epps nodding.

Fig took a moment before he prodded the effectively comatose toaster to life, "Alright... Here, we, go!" For a moment that seemed like forever, the systems idled and with a "Whoa!" the toaster came to life.

"Disconnet!" Fig pulled the cord and flicked away the cables that connected the other humans to him and as a group they backed away, circled around, raising their rifles in case of an unfavorable reaction.

Chest plates snapped together and an arm changed shape twising into a glowing, humming cannon in the space of a second. The next, Will tackled the yellow toaster and shoved his rifle up under the bottom of the plates, into its internals and barked a furious "Stop!" in its language.

Their toaster froze, blue, _blue_ optics flicking back and forth. Blue? The hell?

"Do you understand English?" Will asked it tensely.

The toaster gave a chirp that sounded questioning, those funny looking antenna it had twitching.

"Do you understand English?" Will repeated.

The one wing-like appendage that wasn't pinned lowered and it gave a confused garble of words that sounded even more staticy than their normal voices, which tended to be quick whistles, chirps, blats, and deeper short booming noises, not static, unless they were turning the air blue. None of them thought it was cursing though. None of whatever it was saying was a recognized curse word, and they were _good_ at picking up curse words.

"Fig?"

"You want me to give him some Spanish?" the hispanic quipped.

"No!" Epps immediately barked as Will shook his head.

"English please, Fig," Will said, "If you're going to give him Spanish then include English."

"Alright," Fig said, "You're no fun." The hunter-killer stepped forward, lowering his rifle and grabbed the cable from where it had retracted into the hack guard and offered it to the yellow guy, coughing out the word they figured meant something like "Language/Information" that was never meant for the synthetic vocal cords they had at the moment.

Yellow made a chirr, optics flicking to Will and back to Fig. Will carefully lifted his weight off of the robot, but keeping his rifle where he could take it down if it made any wrong moves.

The toaster slowly raised itself up, making no fast movements. It looked from Will, to Fig, then to Epps, seeming curious.

Fig took a closer step, body language tense as he _offered_ the toaster a chance to figure out how get around the hack guard and take more than just what he was offering.

Slowly, grey fingertips reached out and took the cable with a gentleness that Will didn't know any of the toasters were even capable of.

The next thing that happened was bizarre, even a solid WTF worthy, even by their standards.

A tentacle-y thing snaked out from between plates and connected to Fig's cable and those little wing-things immediately perked right up.

"Fig?"

The man was twitching but he wasn't disconnecting, "S'fine. It's not taking anything I didn't put out there. Just feels really fucking weird."

"Uhhh... Aliens?" Epps chipped in, "Kinda goes with the territory, buddy."

The toaster gave staticy alien laughter before it started coughing and holding its throat as it sparked.

"Ouch," Fig said, "Voice is kinda busted then?"

It was strange, watching the toaster take on human body language like it was wearing a different skin as it nodded to Fig's question.

"Connection's mostly one way but there is a communication option if you, right. Wait! No comms!"

"Fig?"

"It's fine," Fig waved them off, "Our new friend here is acting like a proper gentlebeing."

"Oh, you can put emotion into the stream with emotes you know," Suddenly Fig was snorting with laughter.

"...Fig."

"It's nothing. Guy's just a wiseass, that's all."

Will deadpanned.

"Got everything?" Fig finally asked, "Good." The connection snapped and the cable retracted into its cradle with the tenta-cable disappeared again. Fig pulled out one of their radios and waggled it at Will and Epps, "I'm going to give our new buddy here the speakers so it can use 'em because once upon a time this little guy went up against the Big Old Bastard and got its voice box ripped out for its trouble and has had trouble with it since. _Serious_ David vs Goliath vibes there."

"Ripped out?" That was Epps.

"He went up against that monster and came out _alive?_ " Will.

Many, many deaths had proven that they just didn't have enough information about their information, didn't have enough technological prowess to fill the gap between humanity and living intelligent computers to take take the fight all the way to their enemies and topple the red eyed devil from his throne.

Fig handed over the radio after doing a quick wipe of encrypted frequencies and their yellow friend accepted it. After peering at it curiously, an odd blue light scanning across the shape, one hand exploded into a myriad of tiny tools that made quick work of dismantling and reassembling the radio into a jury rigged speaker system that was attached to the robot's face somehow.

Now there was another trick that they hadn't know the enemy was capable of.

"Hello," was the incongruous greeting from the rather tinny speakers, sounding oddly... young. Three fingered hands waved what was obviously a nervous hello and the optic guards shifted in a way that made it look like it was smiling despite not having a mouth to speak of.

Will wasn't sure if that was creepy or adorable.

"I'd like to be called Bumblebee."

* * *

Bumblebee turned out to be quiet helpful, even willing to abide their twitchyness as he answered all their questions. Despite everything, the sense that they were dealing with a kid who had been figuratively thrown to the wolves and survived didn't really fade.

Bumblebee was what he called an Autobot, the opposing faction of the faction of their race to what he called "Decepticons," but they were all from the planet Cybertron and had been locked in a war for longer a very long time.

Eventually Will only knew that there was one question left to ask. Waving his hand at all the bodies arrayed about the room "Which other... mech," Will stumbled over the word, "do you think would be most able to speak with our leaders about what our people need to know?"

Bumblebee sat still for a long moment, bizarre blue optics scanning about the room. His optics tilted down, obviously thinking.

"Well?" Will prodded. The mech was taking a really long time considering the speed he knew their minds worked at.

"I'm sorry, it's just that the best person I don't dare wake without someone to guard him. The second best is actually a balanced pair that would likely cause more problems than would be solved if only one of them was brought online and we had to leave the other in stasis. My third choice used to have diplomatic programming but... No. The last wouldn't ever leave before he was sure of the status of all the mechs here, and then he would work on bringing them up to shape before he ever thought about liaising."

"That sounds like a highly unstable chain of command you've got there," Epps commented.

"It's not that bad, but no Cybertronian functions well alone and the war has been hard on all of us. We've found balance in each other," Bumblebee said, "We're a highly social species."

"And you are okay being the only one who is aware in here?" Will asked seriously.

"I'm a scout," Bumblebee, "I can take it. And... I'm not totally alone." The mech gave them one of his smiles, "You're here after all."

That little statement had Will's synthetic digestive tract tie itself into knots.

He's okay because _we're_ here?

Will let out a huff, considering. His team could take Bumblebee. The could probably even take another mech. Did he dare tipl the scales by allowing a third one?

What to do? What to do?

Will bit his lip and waved the others over, extending the cable of the hack guard he was still wearing, blue optics watching them curiously.

::I'm not the only one who's in this. Three mechs. Bumblebee and whoever it is he winds up choosing,:: Will struggled with himself. Despite everything that the red eyed monsters had done to Earth and humanity as a species, Will wanted to trust Bumblebee and believe what he said. His gut trusted Bumblebee and though he trusted his gut, he wasn't the only one risking his ass on a gamble this big. He let the emote subchannel convey all the twisted knots this situation was twisting his emotions into and let the other read what the willed of the data.

::I say we go for it," Fig said, unusually willing to accept the possible dangers of waking a third, oddly willing to _trust_ this creature from another world, ::I've touched his mind. There's no malice in him.::

Epps was unusually quiet before he spoke with a seriousness that was usually covered with a ready wit, ::You're both sure about this?::

::Yes,:: answered Fig.

::No,:: answered Will.

Glances were passed all around, questioning feelings on the emote channel passing mostly in Will's direction.

::I want to trust him, but I won't unless you guys are willing to,:: a fierce protectiveness transfered to both of Will's teammates, ::It's my job to make sure you guys get off the field. Maybe not entirely in one piece, but in enough pieces that the docs can put you back together again. If you say no, I'll say no without hesitation. If you say yes...::

::You're being a pushover today,:: Epps finally said, seriousness fading as he poked fun at the leader of their little hunter-killer group, ::Angsting about your little girl, waffling about this and that. Get a grip dude.:: Epps bit his lip, ::I say yes.:: He gave Will a piercing stare, ::I say we risk it.::

Will let out a long breath and nodded, ::Okay.::

The disconnected their little huddle and turned toward the patiently waiting alien robot and Will stepped forward, "We've decided that you can choose two mechs to bring around, but no more.

Bumblebee's optics brightened and chirped a, "Thank you!" The little wing-like panels on his back danced.

A few more seconds and Bumblebee looked up, "I have decided."

"Yeah?" Fig asked, standing the closest to the sitting robot, Autobot, "Who'd you choose?"

"The balanced pair," Bumblebee said, pointing first to the mech that was practically a part of the security console then to the other mech that they had almost decided to wake up instead of Bumblebee.

"And why not your first choice?" Epps asked.

"They are high ranking officers with the power to negotiate, and between the two of them have a somewhat decent diplomatic ability, satisfy each other's social requirements nearly entirely, and the breadth of their abilities separate is much broader than my first choice. _He_ is diplomatic to a fault but his bodyguard is... not."

That was... an okay reason, Will supposed. "Alright, which one are we going to bring online first then?"

"My CO," Bumblebee motioned to the silver mech that was even smaller than their little Bumblebee.

"And here I was thinking that size was a prerequisite for rank," Epps said dryly, "As far as your kind goes, your CO is tiny."

"No size prerequisite! Not among Autobots anyway," Bumblebee said, "We'll bring my CO online first, but I should be the one to do it. If you tried, he would probably attack you guys before he was even aware of what he was doing."

"...Why not do the other one first then? Same problem, plus being connected to the ship's systems?" Will asked.

"Er..." Bumblebee looked extraordinarily awkward, "He might order me to bring my first choice online rather than his balance. That is something none of us want to deal with because he turns into an excruciatingly logical, emotionless... hm... aft, I guess. And he ranks my CO. He's my first choice's SIC."

"An aft?" Fig sniggered.

"So it's a mech with hunter-killer reflexes or a cold-blooded SIC. What a _lovely_ choice," Will quiped, "Go for it Bee."

"Well it could be a trigger-happy crusty old walking armory who likes 'showing off' his cannons," Bumblebee said as he crouched beside his CO.

"And who else would that land us with?" Epps asked.

Bumblebee pointed at the massive red and blue mech they had quickly decided the didn't want to tangle with.

"Ah," then, "Wait. _He's_ the diplomat?"

"No size prerequisite," Bumblebee repeated cheerfully as he carefully rolled the silver mech over, "And he is a diplomat and statesman."

"And he needs a bodyguard... why?"

"Because he has a problem with self-sacrifice and the bodyguard is mostly there to make sure the parts of his personality that make him such an excellent leader don't wind up getting him killed," Bumblebee said matter-of-fact.

"So he's _not_ a soldier?" Epps asked in surprise.

Wings lowered and Bumblebee paused in his work, looking up at them, "He is now." The unspoken "He wasn't suppose to be." conveyed quite well.

A tentacle-y cable snaked out again and connected to a port that Bumblebee shifted the cover to open. Bumblebee made a half harmonic tone from his body and not the rigged up speakers. Without even needing access to the mech's internals, the mech was coming out of stasis.

Bumblebee made another chirping sound and another pair of blue optics snapped on. Cybertronian rumbles rolled off of the mech before he sat up, and turned to look at the humans. "Aliens? Fun," the surprisingly deep voice sounded odd coming out of the smallest mech they'd seen yet. The claws that had been the deciding factor in them not waking him up were clicked together.

"We are going to be bringing" a burst of non-human language that made the speakers crackle angrily "online next but I figured that you should be up before then."

"Just him?" the silver mech asked and rose to his feet.

"For now," Bumblebee said. "This is Will, Fig, and Epps," the yellow mech introduced, "They are what they call hunter-killers."

"Jazz," the silver mech said simply, "So you've been fighting off the 'cons for a while now, huh? Good thing. Just keep showing them up." Jazz glanced at Bumblebee and motioned to the other mech who was still in stasis.

"It's your job to bring him online," Bumblebee said, "Last time he wound up sticking me in our medic's care for a year."

Jazz made a sound strongly resembling a snigger, "Fair enough."

"Just don't let him fry the 'cons just yet," Will said, "We'd like to keep the fact that you guys are up to ourselves until we can figure out what's what."

"Alright," the small mech agreed amiably and ran silver claw tips along the lines of connectors, seeming to count them. A tentacle sprouted and connected to an empty spot. Jazz made a rude noise and several more tentacles sprouted, connecting to the rest of the remaining ports. After a long moment, several times longer than it had taken for Bumblebee to get Jazz running, the silver mech made a feral sounding growl.

"...What's taking so long?"

"He has extremely advanced processors but they are also rather touchy. That added to all the firewalls he has, it makes handling connections like that require a delicate hand," Bumblebee shifted slightly, "I wasn't kidding about being stuck in medical care for a year having everything put back to rights."

"Ouch," Fig said.

"It was that or be overrun by Decepticons. I'd rather take my chances with his firewalls and then our medic's temper," Bumblebee said, "Worth it."

"Know how that is," Fig muttered.

A third set of optics flickered to life, but this time they weren't blue but a golden color. A new voice spat static that they _definitely_ recognized as a curse word, much to the three humans' amusement. The newly awakened mech groaned and Jazz started disconnecting the myriad of cables from the third mech's body with what looked like long familiarity as the white, black, and red mech slumped back into the chair rather than the awkward position against the console. Odd bits of what had looked like parts of the chair shifted and they realized that most of the metal there wasn't some weird sort of chair but _wings_.

"He's a flyer?" Will asked hopefully.

"No. I'm not sure how he would desire his city-state to be translated but it is the normal aesthetic of his place of origin. The wings house a powerful sensor suite. They don't support flight."

"Huh..."

"Praxus," the new mech spoke in a near emotionless voice, "Though it is long gone, I would have it called Praxus."

"And your name?"

"Prowl."

"Well, sir," Will said, "with what little authority I have, I'd like to welcome you to the Moon and if everything goes well, we'd like to get your people in contact with our people's government as soon as we can."

Gold optics flicked to Jazz for a moment before the silver mech nodded and the mech spoke again, "Thank you, Captain."

Jazz lifted one of Prowl's clawed hands and started flexing the joints, claws tracing across colored plating searching for weakness in a way that was familiar to each of the hunter-killers because they cared for their teammates and they occasionally did the same thing a close call. He slowly worked his way up to the mech's torso. Repeating the actions on the other limb, he checked every square centimeter he could get his claws on before crouching down and making his way up both of the mech's legs with the same careful gentleness. Limbs finished, Jazz moved on to the wing-like structures on the mech's back, spreading the large panels up and out, slowly rotating them this way and that in a way that was oddly birdlike.

It was just as oddly gentle as Bumblebee had been when connecting with Fig.

Prowl didn't move other than the part Jazz was touching, helm lolling back against the backrest.

"Is he okay?" Will asked, worried that something was wrong. It wasn't anything that Bumblebee had done for Jazz or for himself.

"His frame is pretty old," Bumblebee shrugged, "Jazz is just careful with him."

Fig frowned, "Why don't you replace his body if all his joints are shot? That's what we'd do."

"The whole body?" Jazz was looking at them sharply.

"Pretty much, yeah," Epps said, "Transfer the important bits and after doing a bit of integration you're good to go."

Will smacked him, "That depends on the type of body you transfer into. You know that."

"Well, yeah, but I can't see myself going back to civilian bodies after being a soldier. They're just so... weak."

Will paused, then smirked, "Fig?"

"Dare you to tell my momma that, Bobby."

Epps froze, "Ah... No thanks. I'd like to remain in one piece, thanks."

Will sniggered and turned back to the aliens, "Sorry about that."

"There is no problem," Prowl said, "However, I believe both of us would be more comfortable if relations were conducted through Jazz."

"Not you?" Will asked.

"Jazz is the best choice in this current setting because he is special operations, as your team appears to be so that is one point of commonality. Jazz is also more comfortable associating with others than I am. Jazz's adaptive personality and social intuititiveness will also decrease the possibilities of a misunderstanding occuring and not being corrected."

Will gave Jazz an evaluating look. SpecOps huh? "If he's Special Ops, then what do you do, besides being SIC?"

"I am Chief Tactical Officer," a trembling white hand lifted slightly and gave a stiff motion toward the bank of screens in front of him before dropping, "Tactics is my gift and that, at least, I can still do."

An old "toaster"? Somehow Will thought that the the toasters they'd been fighting never let any of their own get old enough to be considered "old". They were quick enough to pounce on any perceived weakness after all.

Any Decepticon that survived long enough to be "old" would have to be pretty damn terrifying on the scale of cranky toasters, not the monsters under the bed version.

That was yet another yawning difference between the two sides and this was another kind of irrefutable proof that they were different from the enemy... Unless Prowl was the aforementioned terrifying Decepticon, but no Decepticon would be talking to them like this. Humans were beneath their notice, besides as things in the way or things to kill.

To Jazz, "Is he going to be able to move if he has to?"

"He can move," Jazz said, placing a hand against Prowl's shoulder armor in an oddly tactile manner more human than anything they'd seen from the 'cons who had pretty large personal space bubbles, "He just has to do it in a bit of a different way than most people."

"And how's that?"

Jazz winked, smiling, "An old martial arts trick he learned back in the day."

Er... What?

Jazz snickered, "That was my reaction the first time he did it, though it was more along the lines of 'What the frag?' than anything else."

"I will call the art 'Circuit Cu' and the 'trick' Jazz speaks of an application of knowing how to sense and manipulate the energy pathways," Prowl said.

Jazz snickered and patted Prowl slightly in a way that was amusingly condescending, "It doesn't sound like anything special before he goes and starts _glowing_ and kicking aft and taking names like he's half his age. It's a Pit of a thing to see."

"I see," Will said curiously.

After a bit more casual chatting to feel each other out, they finally got down to planning how they were going to get out of there to contact Earth and protect the rest of the Autobots on the ship.

"We're decided then?" Will asked the unmoving white being that could have been confused with a statue for how much he moved.

"Yes," sharp golden optics stared him down from behind a stoic face that all the humans couldn't help but appreciate the sharpness of the mind behind it.

"Alright then," Will glanced between his teammates, "Good? Then let's blow this popsicle stand."


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Ark arrives at base under the muzzles of heavy suppression weaponry and the humans get their first glimpse of Autobots, cybertronians that would come in peace if not for the war. This necessitates visits to medical, debriefings, and the first overtures.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A less coherent and a shorter chapter than the previous one.

The ship that appeared on the PSR was not any previously identified model, so the AI monitoring it sounded the alarm, making the monitoring station aware that there was an inbound craft.

The people on station raised the level of readiness up one. The bogey was out two hours at its current speed.

Garbled static came over the comms an hour later, soon after officers were arrayed in the OPs center and the readiness was raised another level. The communications officers worked to unscramble the message.

Just before they raised the level again, the comm lines cleared, and squawked. The CO growled, " _Lennox..._ " He turned and barked orders, "Captured enemy ship incoming! Let's meet them on the ground, people!"

"Standard procedure!"

Standard procedure was to greet them. With lots and lots of weaponry to facilitate a more "friendly" welcome home.

* * *

It was always an odd sight to see one of the alien ships coming in to land. It fell somewhere between nerve wracking and thrilling, because sometimes the enemy wasn't entirely neutralized, or there were prisoners, or the ship itself was not entirely sound and crashed rather than landed, or any number of things that could go wrong.

The easy, professional looking landing was odd simply in its perfection.

It was an odd _ship_. The pilots should've had more trouble bringing it in than that, even if the group that had captured it had the most experience piloting the enemy craft.

When the ramp lowered, after the engines wound down and stilled, they were greeted with the strange sight of a white robot of a type they had never seen before, stumbling along with both arms slung over the shoulders of a hunter-killer pair coming down the ramp, trailed by a pair of smaller robots colored cheerful yellow and shiny silver, in turn followed by the third hunter-killer who was unnervingly nonchalant about being in the presence of three of the enemy.

The odd procession came to a stop in front of an unimpressed base commander.

"Lennox?"

The name was infused with a wealth of information, from "What the hell do you think you're doing?" to just plain "What the hell, Lennox?"

"Enemies of our enemies, commander," Will replied jauntily with a devil may care grin and an off handed salute, "That ship we were sent to take? _So_ much more than just another ship."

The hunter-killer pinged the commanding officer a file containing a basic sitrep that made him huff and glare at the shimmering golden hull of the decidedly _different_ alien ship. It didn't have trailing tentacles. It didn't have a myriad of sharp points projecting off of it. It wasn't bristling with obvious weaponry. It was actually strangely rounded to optics used to looking at and pinpointing the best points to attack on the toaster's warships.

 _That_ was not a warship.

With that in mind, Sharp turned back to the supposed enemies of the toasters they'd been fighting for years now, seeing the small silver toaster creep closer to the injured one. The injured one's head did not rise and the thing's legs trembled to support its weight, even with the assistance it was being given.

"Fine. Get them inside and checked out," Sharp barked, "Disable their weapons and have the white one--"

"Prowl, sir," Will interrupted.

Sharp have the hunter-killer a narrow eyed glare, "Have _Prowl_ looked at by medical. Unless there's something urgent you didn't mention? No? Then I'm not going to talk to supposed potential allies out here on the tarmac."

Speaking directly to the aliens for the first time, Sharp just laid it out bluntly, "Pull something and we will kill you."

The yellow one gave a chirp that Sharp couldn't decipher and the silver toaster's weird blue optics glared but the white one, Prowl Lennox had called it, raised its head and nodded slightly, similarly oddly colored optics steady. "Understood," it said, in _English_.

Surprised, Sharp managed to say with his habitual hard-ass manner, "Glad we understand each other."

The colonel stepped aside and motioned for the odd group to continue on out of the hangar, leaving everyone else to stand around and gawk.

Running a hand down his face, Sharp counted to five before started barking orders at all the people standing around and gawking, his roar rising over the hubbub, "What the hell do you maggots think you're doing? Get back to work! Gawk on your free time, not the government's time, and _certainly_ not on mine! Secure that ship! Perimeter! Where's that optical camouflage? What do you think this is? A tea party? Move your butts!"

* * *

Sharp stared at the group of robots suspiciously from the real-time display on the wall, "Well?"

"The white one, Prowl, isn't injured. Not really," the military medtech said with a shrug, sending the relevant files that the colonel wasn't interested in parsing into relevant information when he had someone to do so for him.

"What's wrong with it then?" the colonel asked sharply.

"He's old as hell and the wear and tear of fighting an extended war without proper repairs have taken their toll. Acute arthritis in alien robots," the man said with another shrug, "The silver one, Jazz, was asking about our repair capabilities and was asking about how we did our full body replacements, said one of the hunter-killers had mentioned we were capable of it. I didn't really answer him but he said that their medic just didn't have the materials to do anything than upkeep and emergency repairs, much less the kind of fixing that, um, mech would require to get back into fighting shape."

"What about the other two then?"

"Jazz appears to be in decent health for his conditions and having been stuck in some sort of stasis for an unknown amount of time. Knowing hunter-killers as I do however..." The medic shrugged, "I wouldn't be surprised if he was hiding some kind of injury or other. That kind of personality is always so stubborn. The last is called Bumblebee and he suffers for the same level of wear and tear as Jazz, plus an old injury to his vocal apparatus that makes him functionally mute. It shows repeated attempts at repair and reinjury."

"I see."

"Finally getting to see some of these... people, up close while their alive and not trying to take my head off is pretty cool," the medic said.

Sharp ignored the last bit, "Dismissed."

"Sir," the man rose to his feet and exited.

Sharp closed his eyes, "An 'old man,' a 'midget,' and a mute. _This_ is what you bring me, Lennox?"

"An insanely capable tactician who knows exactly what the toasters are capable of, a high ranking, highly capable special forces officer, and a capable, level-headed young junior officer that wants to hope," Will corrected from the door, "There are also a bunch more of them on that ship, sleeping away. A diplomat cum soldier almost as big as the Big Ugly, a mech they described as a walking armory who stands as his bodyguard, a medic that's been keeping them in fighting shape when they are running on fumes... Who knows what the others might be capable of."

"And if you're wrong?" Sharp asked, "What then?"

Will shrugged, "Can you tell me that anything they can do to us will be worse than the beating we're taking out there ever day when at least if they're here we can keep our eyes on them? Hell, I'd even go so far as to say that the fact that they are willingly sitting in that room and patiently waiting to talk to us instead of blowing everything up in sight is a good thing. _I_ certainly never imagined that we'd be having aliens as guests considering the shitstorm the toasters caused."

Sharp glared and jabbed a finger toward the military-grade chair, recently vacated by the medtech, "Sit. We'll wait until the rest of your team arrives and then we are going to have a god damn debriefing."

"Yessir," Will said and sat, oddly pleased with himself for managing to get under his CO's plating and drag such a put-out reaction out of the usually solid man.

Over the stretch of the half hour that passed, Fig, then Epps came in while Sharp watched the video display like a hawk.

It was a long moment before Sharp turned around and seated himself. "Alright, let's take this from the top. Your team was dispatched to the Sea of the Edge in an attempt to capture or eliminate an enemy warship located there. Let's start with that."

* * *

Jazz sat next to the berth Prowl had been laid out on. The mech had gone into recharge to conserve his energy but up until then, Jazz had spent the time happily chattering away about what he was seeing, verbally helping the tactician build a working framework he could use to deal with their newest hosts. Not long after, Bumblebee had done the same, leaving Jazz to keep an optic out while the other two defragged and put their systems to rights after the abrupt offlining, equally abrupt onlining, and the following stressful first contact.

Jazz could just tell that this was going to be even more difficult than most first contacts. Partly that was because they were actually at a severe disadvantage this time, without the opportunity to first observe the civilization they had found themselves stranded in they were going to have to make it up as they went along.

The fact that they had been actively warring against the Decepticons who were of the same species as them made it _much_ worse.

They couldn't exactly pass themselves off as potentially harmless.

The suspicions of a race that had managed to survive this long wouldn't let them disarm themselves so easily.

The only information that they had, besides what they had observed firsthand with the hunter-killer cadre, was the small seed of information given to them by the one called Fig. All the networks were locked down to prevent access from Decepticon hackers so Jazz couldn't even skim information off of them.

Jazz wondered how it was that he had never heard of this race of mechanoids before.

If they had been capable of managing to hold their own against the 'cons with absolutely no assistance for more than little over fifteen decaorns, then Jazz _should_ have known about them. Most races attacked unawares by the 'cons tended to fold within two or three.

It made no _sense_ , so Jazz carefully kept those thoughts to himself and instead occupied himself attempting to categorize the different beings.

Jazz had to wonder if all their people are militaristic or if what he was seeing was a military caste.

The basic frametypes they had seen on the way in were all very similar. There were the hunter-killers, who had been the same in type, with personalized faceplates and kibble and that odd colored filaments that Jazz could see sticking out from under their helms, and so far were the most heavily armed and armored frametype in the bunch.

There were the similarly sized, but less durable looking soldiers that had been in the hangar where they had landed the Ark.

There had been that the ranking officer model named Sharp who was a "colonel" who though he had the same amount of armor as the rests of the mechs not of the hunter-killer type, seemed to have forgone some weaponry for communications and sensory mods. Jazz had noticed that Sharp hadn't had any of the odd filaments like the others.

The newest type they had seen had to be the medical oriented ones who had looked them all over, who had been practically _all_ armor, sacrificing weaponry and speed for greater survivability of attacks while stuck in one spot tending to a patient and medical tools.

All of them were fighters, Jazz could tell, even on down to the medics where the smoothness of their plating spoke of how little they actually fought.

The level of politeness on the other hand, as odd and _alien_ a form of politeness as it was, was surprising for a military setting.

In Jazz's experience, no matter the species, politeness tended to take a back seat when important things, like, say, _the survival of a species_ was on the line.

A joor passed before the door opened again, and Will came inside, talking to a positively _tiny_ mech that followed a very different construction scheme than anything he'd seen from the humans yet. Besides, it was the smoothest design he had ever seen.

Unlike the neutral matte colors of the spiky military mechs, this little being was as brightly colored as an Autobot, with a predominance of red and black, with scattered bits of white and gold. An odd, long, multi-stranded filament of some sort sprouted from the back of its helm, falling down most of the length of its small body. It reminded Jazz of the cranial sensory tendrils that one rather eccentric mech he could name had, though minus the glowing, lightning-struck, slightly see-through appearance.

When the being turned, the faceplates shown weren't so much _plates_ as some odd sort of synthetic covering that flexed and shifted, mimicking the expressions on the military caste's faces as tiny hands gestured. A myriad of small, handheld weapons were holstered about his hips, and a quick scan turned up a small, but highly capable mini-cannon of some sort that the being's arms could transform into.

Will knelt down and said something to the being that had red horns nodding. The being jumped into Will's lowered hands.

Jazz watched curiously as Will approached, wondering at the differences between the two very different frame types. What kind of human was this?

After they were standing at a certain distance, (Jazz was carefully tracking what these people considered personal space and proper speaking distance, and posture, and, and, and...) Will smiled, that odd denta-baring not-threat. "Hello again, Jazz," he said, lowering his hand to the berth across from the mech, "I hope they've been treating you well?"

Jazz shrugged, "I'd think so. It's just... odd. You know a lot about cybertronians, and we know practically nothing about you guys."

"Really?" the black and red being said, growled maybe, subharmonics jarringly similar to typical Decepticon subvocals compared to anything else Jazz had experience with, made even more of an mismatch to his distinctly un-Decepticon appearance. He dropped from Will's hand onto the berth and crossed his arms, "You'll have to forgive me if I don't really believe that."

Will winced, "Jazz, this is Fin, an irregular-hunter."

"Nice to meetcha," Jazz said, wondering if he was supposed to do that odd "handshake" ritual with the small being, but decided to not, since none of the meetings he'd had so far had required them, "What does an irregular-hunter do?" It was curious that two obviously very different frame types had partially the same name.

Fin smirked, and then suddenly it wasn't so odd, when the expression had the same feral glint that he had seen in all the good soldiers he'd ever seen, mech or human.

Will chuckled. "These guys ride herd on _us_. You wouldn't think it to look at them," a large claw prodded playfully at red armor and was swatted away, "but a good hunter can take down even a hunter-killer that's completely lost it."

Jazz stared at the tiny being, not entirely disbelieving because he'd seen his fair share of just how deadly a small person could be. Pit, Jazz _himself_ counted among the ranks of small but deadly, especially when going up against the hulking war frames the Decepticons favored. "What makes someone 'irregular' to be taken down?"

Fin's face went blank and his voice was cold, subharmonics hostile, "The current meaning is mostly a reference to the hijacking or viral infection of human cyberbrains, the core programming of a sophisticated AI, or corruption of lesser and primitive AI constructs by these Decepticons of yours that drive them to 'irregular' and highly undesirable behaviors, among them, suddenly going mad and attacking everyone in sight with murderous intent is one example, red optics and all. Often times, the only option we are left with is to kill the victim."

Jazz winced. Ouch. He had killed traitors, sure, even took some pleasure in breaking those sub-sentient _things_ that would join the Decepticon "cause" before finally killing them, but it was always worse when you had to kill someone that didn't really deserve it. "Do you have a sample of the virus? Maybe I could get one of my people to take a look at it?" If he could make something that caused so much suffering like it sounded the "irregular" virus did, as per typical Decepticon MO, then he would personally feel as if they accomplished something, even if they weren't allowed to do anything else just yet.

Fin blinked at him with blank, black optics for a long moment before his head whipped around to stare at Will with an intent, burning look. Will merely nodded and Fin turned the ferocity back towards Jazz. "I'd have to ask, but my inclination is _yes_ ," the little being said fiercely, surprising Jazz with his willingness to remove the need for what he did. Most cybertronians wouldn't be so quick to just outmode the reason for their existence. "If we could stop the outbreaks..." There was so much desperate _hope_ radiating off of him, an odd guilt faintly flavoring the field.

Ah... If they could stop the outbreaks, then Fin and his like would no longer have to kill their friends...

If there was ever a reason to wipe your own job from existence, that was a worthy one.

Because Jazz could _tell_ that as gruff as Fin acted, he _was_ friends with Will.

And that didn't touch on the trust the Autobots might gain with these beings if they could stop a human version of robosmasher from corrupting their programming.

"We'd do our best," Jazz promised. To stop the Decepticons, help the race being attacked by them, gain that race's trust, simply _help_ , all of those things were upsides to doing so. It might be calculated, but that was Jazz's job at the moment, at least until Prowl was back up and acting as his check.

He couldn't, wouldn't, offer too much or request too much without Prowl's agreement. It was simply the way they had learned they worked best, pooling their mental resources.

Either way though, Jazz knew there was one thing that he would ask for, no matter what however. This planet and its people had enough resources. Enough to spare for something so small and delicate. For this one thing, Jazz would even go behind Prowl's back for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes: "Fin" is a character I nabbed from another series and altered so I could drop him into SaS. Fin and a friend will be reoccurring characters. Net-cookies to people if they can guess who it is. ...Or just tell me if I'm being too obvious and should quit while I'm ahead.


	4. Absconded Introductions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Primalis arrives on base, only to be dragged off without a word of introduction to any of the mechs he was supposed to talk to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I _said_ that this fic wasn't in chronological order right?

It took Fin one glance at Primalis before he was grabbing the smaller versapiens and dragging him off with a rather thunderous expression.

The larger beings watched wordlessly as the pair disappeared out the door.

"Alright," Jazz said, "I'll bite. What's the deal with Fin kidnapping—?"

Fin's voice suddenly growled through the door, "Tell me which moron was it that made you come out here dressed like that so I can kill him for being an _idiot_. You're _naked_!" The horror in Fin's harmonics was almost comical, "Where the hell is your armor, you dolt? Did you want to give me a heart attack showing up dressed like that? That coat offers _no_ protection at _all!_ " Fin actually sounded mortally offended.

A softer voice answered fading off as they went further away. "I'm _not_ naked just because I'm wearing human clothing!" Primalis certainly sounded plenty embarrassed by the accusation though, "And don't be ridiculous. We can't _have_ heart attacks..."

Jazz held up his hand, lips twitching. "Never mind," he said, remembering the same thing happening to Optimus a few times during the first vorns of unrest, before everything had fallen apart and Megatron had gone _completely_ off the deep end. Those two... _Dyad_. It had to be. "We can be introduced after Fin's friend has a chance to get 'dressed.'"

Will shrugged helplessly, "Sorry about that. I should've guess that that'd happen. Those two are just..." He spread his hands and shrugged again, "They're something else. That's for sure."

Jazz just grinned, "No prob. I understand Fin's reasoning _perfectly_." Real _Dyad_ weren't exactly hard to understand. You just had to know what made them tick. An unarmored Prime in a warzone was just the thing to kick a Protector's Protector-Mode into high gear all the way up to eleven. Fin would be completely unreasonable until his bidding was done.

For some reason that made him grin even harder. He couldn't wait to meet Fin's Prime.

...Once he was properly attired of course.


	5. Infinitar - Origins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Father would go far for his Son, and one person witnesses and shares in just how far an old human would go for his sole living child.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No Transformers in this one. This falls prior to the Decepticons appearing in _Steel and Steel_.

"Who you were is dead," a voice told him. It was a recording from the flat tones, but he could tell that it was also a human voice from the imprecision of the phenoms. It was an _old_ human's voice, he could tell from the faint scratch that he remembered hearing in the voices of the rare old human that had managed to survive that long in the post apocalyptic radiation blasted _mess_ the Earth had become following the Cataclysm and the endless warring afterward.

"But I don't think you honestly care if the world thinks you were actually finally killed or not, because you are yourself and the only people that you cared to change yourself for are dead... Right?" the voice continued, "It would let them move on at least. Wouldn't it?"

A light lit up the blackness. No. That was just his optics finally deigning to activate.

"You proved yourself to me," the voice said, and he still couldn't place it, "so I have decided to give you a chance when you have always only ever worked to do your best for my youngest son."

"...Doctor?"

He had heard that voice so rarely... but there was only one person whose son the voice could be talking about.

Movement was returned to him and he sat up, wincing when cables that were still connnected up and down the length of his spine tugged uncomfortably. He didn't care about that though, because what he was seeing was _impossible_.

"Is that...?" he couldn't help but ask, "Is he...?"

"For this life, I have decided to name him Primalis," the voice continued, "No one in this era remembers Latin besides you two anymore, after all. For you, though you may have been created to be the weapon in my enemy's hands, I have decided that in this life, you will be my own as well. If I were to have created you with my own two hands to go beyond all limits I would have named you Infinitar."

"Your Ghost, _You_ were never actually deleted, were you, Doctor?" "Infinitar" asked, "You kept watching. You just never interefered."

"You are correct, I did continue to watch," the good Doctor said, and he could tell this time that it was the fact that he was dealing not with a recording, but the flatness of a human's ghost that had been completely cyberized, comunicating through the substandard speakers of this lab. "My son deserved to have the chance to live without me always looking over his shoulder."

"But he died," he decided, "and you didn't want to let him go. Not if you could save him." He knew that _he_ couldn't have done it if he'd had any way to save "Primalis" himself.

"It is a failing of mine," the doctor replied as a holographic projection was projected into the android's optics, showing the doctor looking down at his son's new body, "but I have never wanted to outlive my children, such as my existence could be termed 'living,' and when his signature started to disappear... I couldn't let him go. Not when he is my last child still left alive."

"He might not thank you for saving him," the android said softly, forced to admit the truth that he hadn't wanted to admit even to himself, "He sacrificed himself to save me, but I think... maybe he just wanted to... go. He was so worn down and I wasn't any help without my memories."

"You might not have been there for him then, Infinitar, but you will be from now on. You will protect Primalis as you always have, but in this new life, as _my son_ , rather than my enemy's weapon, you will never leave him alone that way again," the expression was fierce on the doctor's kind face which was creased by wrinkles in the projection when he could have shown himself as being in his prime.

"But what if...!"

" _My son_ , not _his_ ," the doctor said, "You are still a weapon, because that is how you see yourself, but the only one who will wield you from now on will be _you_. No one else. Not unless _you_ wish them to, as you trusted Primalis to show you the way and wield you to protect what was right."

He let out a breath shaky breath, "...Infinitar, huh? Not... Not who I was." He turned his gaze downward, "I'd like to see _him_ be able to live his life without the weight of being who he was. Maybe then he could be..." He struggled to imagine the person who meant everything to him without the weight of the world on his shoulders... and failed. "I... I'd like to see that."

"Good," the old Doctor said, stooped shoulders rising slightly as he turned back to his youngest creation with a gentle smile, like a father to his son, where Infinitar had only known the rantings of a madman who had wanted have the Earth under his control or no one's, "He'll be ready soon."

"You aren't going to disappear on him again after he does wake up, are you Doctor?" Infinitar asked as he belated started disconnecting all the cables connected to his dorsal access ports by awkwardly twisting his arms around behind him to dislodge them.

"He doesn't need an old relic like me to hold him back, Infinitar," the man said heavily.

Infinitar paused to stare at what he knew was just a trick of the eye, "You know what? Sudden adoptive creator or not, I _really_ want to smack you one right now. And _no_ , that isn't because of any code that you might have missed from _him_ , because I already know that you have a better head for code than _he_ ever did. I just think for being such a smart guy you are _such an idiot_."

"What?"

Fingers clenched in long blond hair out of frustration at his inability to physically knock the good Doctor's head against something solid and hopefully force a reboot. He was going to have to attempt to _talk_ the guy into not being a dumbass. Infinitar was a physical kind of guy. Words were not his forte. That was _Primalis'_ job.

The Doctor was honestly _surprised_? Infinitar glared, "Idiot. Just for that, since everyone's getting new names, I'll call you Vetulus just for spite, you 'old relic.'"

The disembodied Ghost gave a startled laugh. "Oh dear. Those of your line have always had such _fire_ in them. I suppose turnabout's only fair play." The holograph smiled, laugh lines creasing.

Infinitar tilted his head, "You know what? Why don't you reembody your self and be there for him _in person_ , rather than talking to him over the network. ...Or at least stop pretending to be a recording. That's just _cold_."

"Reembody?" the Ghost startled, "I don't think... I haven't had a body in so long..."

Infinitar palmed his face, "He's spent time stuck without a body himself so... so long as you are alive, I don't think he'd care one way or the other. Just _be there_ for him."

"You think?" Vetulus asked.

Infinitar gave him a flat look, "Don't be stupid. He'd be over the moon."

"If—If you're sure..."

" _Yes._ Yes I am sure."

"...Alright."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: Yep. There's Fin and Primalis. Care to take a guess at how old they are? :)


	6. Of Trines and Tribulations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trines aren't limited to Cybertronians.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I admit to shamelessly lifting these guys from _Stealth_ , but pretty much just a basic idea. Pretty much from watching this [eye candy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymfDLRo0KgM) and a very, _very_ basic premise. Trines. And that awkward guy off to the side in a game of "one of these is not like the others". I poked around a bit but I don't really have that great an understanding of personalities so besides the fact that Talon-3 is a total man-whore I don't really have much idea what the characters' actual personalities are. All three of the Talons are hard-core pilots who swapped out humanoid bodies for more high performance models—i.e. the jets in the vid. They just don't have cockpits. That'd be stupid. I will say that they are high performance enough that with enough luck and skill they could possibly take on a Seeker one-on-one... if not for the dirty tricks Seekers pull with their ability to transform and unlike Starscream in the first movie, the seekers aren't playing around.

"We're a three man wing," Talon-3 grumbled for the umpteenth time.

"Oh shut up," Talon-2 growled, "I've had it with your whining. Suck it up already."

"Complaining isn't going to accomplish anything," Talon-1 said, "Command has commanded. We get to do as we're told like good little grunts."

"Three man wing!" Talon-3 said.

"Are you stuck on repeat or something, Three?" Talon-2 asked acerbically, "Maybe you should get that checked."

"Arguing isn't going to help either," Talon-1 sighed.

"They're sticking an AI on _our_ team!" Talon-3 hissed, "Not even a Sophie, but a Stan! A _Stan!_ "

"Talon-3..." Talon-1 said.

"A _Stan!_ "

"I didn't take you for a bigot," Talon-2 said snidely.

"I didn't take you for a bitch," Talon-3 sniped back.

"What are you both?" Talon-1 broke in, "Two? This is serious."

"I'm not a bitch," Talon-2 growled.

"I don't like having some muckety muck just deciding to tack on an extra wingman. We're the three musketeers. The holy trinity! On the count of three! Rock paper scissors! Three is the best number and now they want to mess that up with some hot shot, untested, baby _Stan?_ Oh, look! He's got VTOL. How shiny! Doesn't change the fact that he's stuck as a delta-wing. Doesn't even have any switchblades."

Anger bounded and repounded from one emote channel to another, a positive feedback loop revving up.

"Two, Three..." Talon-1 said, aggravation plain despite his attempt at inducing some calm into the situation, despite the way their emotions were feeding off each other.

" _One_..." Talon-3 drawled mockingly, "Four is an unlucky number."

"Look," Talon-1 said, "We've just got to deal with it until the guy is trained up a bit and then we can go back to doing what we do best."

"And that's definitely not babysitting baby Stans," Talon-3 said bitingly.

"Have you actually even bothered to read his spec? Or has someone replaced your inputs with VGA?" Talon-2 asked, "He's not a baby, even if he is socially stunted. You would be too if you were 'raised' in a lab."

"Oh, sure," Talon-3 snarled, "Stick up for the interloper."

Talon-1 sighed again, "You know what? I'm not even going to bother. Fight all you like." The lead air superiority fighter signed off, leaving the two wingmates listening to static.

"Crap," Talon-3 hissed.

"Nice going, dunce," Talon-2 said bitingly and promptly followed the example of Talon-1.

Talon-3 growled and shut off his own comm.

* * *

EDI stayed quiet, as he had since his superiors had given him the channel, before he too quietly signed off.

* * *

"So you've always been a special project and a SAICAV?" Talon-2 asked.

"Yes," EDI said. His online self was an odd, mostly black sphereoid with silver inlays radiating outward from a large red optics outlined with a ring of eight secondaries, only one of which, the main one, had the ring of small optics turned blue.

"That must've sucked," Talon-1 said, even as Talon-3 sulked off to the side.

"I do not understand why you would belive that, Talon-1," EDI said.

"You wouldn't have had much opportunity to grow," Talon-2 said, "not if they raised you in the same manner they treated _us_ when they were giving us our wings."

The optic refocused, "Records indicate that I was to imprint on my wingmates rather than the scientists involved in my creation. My empathy capabilities were suppressed during that time to ensure I would properly connect with your wing, Talon-1."

"Wait one second," Talon-3 moved closer, "You're saying that they purposefully _stunted_ you? That is _not_ cool. Talon-1—?"

"I know," Talon-1 said, "I'll 'talk' to them."

Talon-3 snorted, slightly white about the lips, "Good."

Talon-3 didn't like the idea of taking a Standard into combat and to find out that his creators hadn't even given him the option or opportunity to develop enough to make the choice grated even worse than the idea of taking a mature, _informed_ Stan. Sophies could take care of themselves, Stans of the tier that EDI was on, and those in lower tiers were supposed to be protected, not trotted out as cannon fodder.

"Yes," Talon-2 said lowly, "I think that a 'talk' is in order as well, One." Her fingers locked together, knuckles white.

* * *

"You've got some pretty smooth moves there," Talon-3 said, sliding closer until he was almost wing to the young AI's wing.

"I am not interested in having sex with you," EDI said flatly, causing the talon to sputter and waver in flight.

"Whoa. Hold up," Talon-3 said, edging away from the SAICAV, "I was _not_ propositioning you, EDI. No. Just _no_. Totally not into robbing the cradle here."

"I have never had a cradle, so that defense if moot," EDI replied.

Talon-3 groaned, "Not literally, EDI."

* * *

"You've got an ugly on your six, Talon-3!" Talon-2 warned.

"I have the 'ugly'," EDI said politely, before he "politely" shoved a missile up the jet-shaped toaster's tail.

The jet toaster exploded and the four jets moved onward, returning to their formation as they danced through and around the other, less advanced human fighters and ripped into the enemy.

"Get. Off. My. _Ass!_ " Talon-1 snarled moments later, wings sweeping forward as he increased thrust and lept forward, twisting around as an enemy sniffed at his exhaust.

"Got it? Got it? Got it?" Talon-3 chanted.

"Got it!" Talon-2 sang out, and the bogey exploded.

"Transmitting telemetry," EDI said calmly after a moment.

"Telemetry this, _byotch!_ " Talon-3 laughed. All four fighters let loose, spraying the enemy with ordinance with pinpoint accuracy.

"Total enemy forces have been depleted by 73 percent," EDI appraised them, "Wing ordinance down to 67 percent."

"We've got this in the bag," Talon-1 said, "Let's mop them up."

"Confirmed," EDI said, sounding satisfied for once, "Commencing mop up."

"There you go, buddy!" Talon-3 said, "Let'em have it!"

EDI queued up an old song he had found in a cache of surviving information the Reclamation Divisions had turned up.

"Oooh? What's that? That's _nice_ ," Talon-3 said, "You've got _taste_ , EDI."

"Thank you, Talon-3," EDI said politely, "I have a large selection of music if you wish to hear more."

"Heh," the human flyer gave a chuckle, "I'll have to take you up on that, Stanny-boy. I'll definitely have to take you up on that. Thanks."

"It is no problem, Talon-3."

Another hour had the flying scum taken care of.

"Hey, Command wants us to return to base," Talon-2 said, "They don't want us sticking around this time. They say to let the regular guys handle it."

"All mission parameters have been met," EDI agreed, "Fuel levels are lower than advisable."

"Shit, yeah," Talon-3 muttered, "That goes ditto for me."

"Acknowledged," Talon-1 said, "Wing returning to base."

"Talon-2, acknowledged."

"Talon-3, acknowledged."

"E-D-I, acknowledged."

"Making for heading 2-4-3," Talon-1 said.

Three clicks answered him over the comm.

As one, the four fighter wing departed. As they sped up, the switchblade wings on the Talons' frames swept forward until they had a delta shape, more similar to SAICAV frame that EDI had than the predatory silhouettes they had when their wings were spread.

The thunder of sonic booms reached the ones remaining behind as a roar of victory before they slipped off the radar entirely and out of the range of Mark One Eyeball.

* * *

"Ooooh?" Talon-3 said, "You're using warm water?" Tiny, almost invisible fur-like dermal sensors rippled along his skin. "Feels _nice_ ," the fighter jet crooned hedonistically to the work crew walking about on top of him as they scrubbed away.

Talon-2 snorted amusedly, "Irredeemable flirt."

"That's our Three," Talon-1 said cheerfully. Talon-3 really was in full form at the moment and they would get the same treatment later. Talon-3's good mood was infectious as it seeped over to them.

They both snorted when they saw him waggle his vertical fins that jutted out to either side, "Make sure you don't miss the underside of my chines, hey? Gotta get 'em nice and sharp looking."

"And the sharper the chine, the slower the mind," Talon-2 sang _sotto voce_ to Talon-1, making him snigger.

"Talon-3 has rather sharp chines," EDI quietly observed, making the two talons that could hear him break out into helpless laughter.

* * *

"Three!" Talon-1 called out, "Stop playing 'footsie' with that Storm Eagle and get your head in the game! This is a battle, not foreplay!"

"MmMmm! When it comes to someone who can fly like that? A battle like this _is_ foreplay!"

Talon-2 laughed, "I'd thank you just as much if you weren't attempting to give a demonstration why your callsign was 'Easy' for a while."

"What was that?" Talon-3 asked, "I can't _hear_ you!"

* * *

"Huh?" Talon-1 said, "What's this?" He opened the file he had been sent. "Reassignment orders?"

"Reassignment orders?" Talon-2's attention snapped away from where she had been flirting with one of the pilots of the Wind Dragon wing.

The little guy scratched the back of his head, "Damn. You guys are going to have to go already?"

"Yeah," Talon-1 said, "All the way over to the Panama base." The Panama base... which was really glorified and fortified bait to keep the toasters attention away from other areas. They didn't keep anything of _real_ value that they couldn't recoup there, at least not until now. Something had to have changed which made increasing their complement important enough to move the talon wing over there.

The man whistled, "The forward base? I'm going to hate having to watch a sexy thing like you go."

"Panama?" Talon-2 ignored the continued flirting now that her attention had been gained.

"Panama," Talon-1 agreed.

"Why now?"

"Doesn't say."

"Told Talon-3 and EDI yet?"

"I'm sure EDI already knows," Talon-1 snorted, "He's a smart little guy. Doubt he's told Talon-3 though."

Talon-2 snickered, "I think he just likes stringing Talon-3 along."

Talon-1 joined her in snickering. EDI had come to make a strange game out of manipulating Talon-3 like that. Luckily their third was a good sport about it.

Talon-1 pulled back, "I'll tell him."

"Alright," Talon-2 turned her attention back to her latest flirt, with a sigh, "I suppose that's our answer then."

The man shrugged, "I'll miss you, sexy."

"Oh, that's sweet of you," Talon-2 cooed, making Talon-1 mentally roll his eyes when he could feel her awkwardness at the potentially sappy goodbyes over their emote channel.

"Do you two even know each others names?" Talon-1 asked over their private channel.

"His name's Jackson," Talon-2 replied, but Talon-1 could tell, much to his exasperation, that she had just scanned the man's uniform for it.

* * *

"We've got our flight vector?"

"Yup, let's get this over with," Talon-3 said grumpily, not exactly a morning person who enjoyed getting up at the buttcrack of dawn by any means. His wings deflected back and forth lazily.

"Stealth?"

"It's fine," Talon-2 said, "We're still invisible."

"Let's go then," Talon-1 said.

"To Panama!" Talon-3 gave a sarcastic cheer.

"Talon-3, I did not realize you were so excited for this change in assignment," EDI said, "Perhaps we should have requested an earlier flight."

Talon-3 growled as Talon-1 and 2 snickered at his expense, amusement meeting irritation over the emote channels, both meshing with EDI's satisfaction.

* * *

"Panama is five minutes out of sight range," EDI said eventually, breaking the in-flight banter.

"Finally," Talon-1 said.

Not long after, Talon-2's sudden heightened attention caught their attention, "What the hell is _that?_ "

"That" was the unfamiliar shape of a massive golden craft looming over the base.

EDI was quiet for a moment before he did his sneaky thing that the wing had come to appreciate after they had gotten over how unnerving it was to have a member able to hack his way through security with the limited allowances they were all given.

"It was initially a captured enemy vessel but a tentative appendation to it lists it as a potential ally's craft," EDI said, confusion leaking from the usually cool professional presence, "It is now listed as the Autobot craft: Ark."

"Ally?"

"Autobot?"

"The hell?"

* * *

Three suspicious Talons and one SAICAV touched down in the shadow of the behemoth and were directed to taxi to the lifts that would take them down into the belly of the base. Their wings shifted forward from where they had been spread for the lower speed landings.

They were met by a large soldier who was one of the rarer massive ground fighters that were as much the ground weapons in the war against the aliens as the Talon wing was against the aerial aliens, but where the Talons were ambush predators who preferred to stoop from the air to take their prey unawares, the guys who had those kinds of bodies fought in extremely close quarters.

The soldier motioned for them to follow him, "This way."

Not to mention that "rare" was a different measurement on a forward base like Panama, when they could see that other than the other aircraft, quite a few of which were "dumb" aircraft which required a pilot to board, everyone that they saw had military grade bodies, with varying degrees of weaponization.

They saw several teams of hunter-killers interspersed with the regular military, and several groups of versapiens moved about, their smaller, more varying frames brilliant blazes of color among the more muted shades of the base.

A large, winged aerial versapiens flitted overhead in the cavernous main level with a glitter of sapphire blue metallic feathers, vanishing around a corner with a sharp bank.

"Wouldn't mind checking _him_ out later," Talon-3 said over their private channel, then paused, "Or her. Though I'm thinking male. Looked more male."

Talon-2 sighed. "Callsign 'Easy' is at it again."

"Hey, you can't rag on me for knowing when I like what I see," Talon-2 said with a chuckle.

"We don't," the other two talons chorused as EDI gave an amused hum.

"Hold up," Talon-1 stopped laughing and let out a hiss, "What the hell is one of _them_ doing here?"

A yellow—Yellow? Really?—toaster was just standing there, unrestrained.

_Watching them._

Talon-2 hissed at him as all three Talon's wings opened up despite the uselessness of it in the confined area and the errant enemy crouched, right arm transforming.

As strong, as agile, as _superior_ as they were in the air, stuck on the ground in an enclosed area, _underground_ , they were sitting ducks. It was _not_ good for their nerves to see an enemy standing there in a place that was supposed to be somewhat _safe_ , considering they were on a forward base in the middle of a high activity warzone.

"Whoa! Sirs!" the soldier jumped, sliding between them and the toaster, "He's fine! He's fine." He held up his hands, making placating motions, "He's not an enemy."

"He?" Talon-2 said, investing all of his suspicion in that one word even as his sensors watched another soldier place a hand against the yellow toaster's chest, shaking his head.

"Yes sir," the soldier who had been leading them nodded, "They say his name is Bumblebee."

"...Bumblebee," Talon-1 said skeptically, but saw the way that the yellow toaster had transformed his arm back into fingers and stood back upright.

Slowly, wings returned to their folded position.

The yellow toaster nodded to them.

"Hmmm..." Talon-1 hummed, "Fine. Keep it _out_ of our hangar."

"Of course, sir," the soldier said, "This way."

"I don't like this..." Talon-2 said over their private channel.

"'Bumblebee' is designated as an Autobot and tentative ally," EDI said.

"So these 'Autobots' are toasters?" Talon-1 said.

"What the _fuck_ is going on here?" Talon-2 asked the question they were all wondering with rare profanity.

"I'm sure we're going to find out," Talon-1 said, "I'm sure we're going to find out." He sighed, "EDI?"

"Yes Talon-1?"

"Do your thing."

"Of course, Talon-1."

* * *

Settled in, they powered down sensors and hooked up to the intranet, their comparatively tiny manipulators grabbing the cables and connecting them to ports. Connected, their minds fled their bodies, joining the network and greeting the pair of Ghosts already there and the myriad of aircraft who were similarly embodied as well as the occasional versapiens and the even rarer human.

"Hello, hello, _hello!_ " Talon-3 said to the flurry of greetings and welcome, "It's good to be here. The flight was beautiful. Boring, but beautiful. Saw some pretty health looking forest in Area Zero on the way. Nope. Most of the trip was ocean. Gotta love the ocean if only because the toasters hate it. Panama's wonderful about that by the way I have _got_ to say."

EDI peeled off, bobbing along at roughly chest height, his odd, spherical mental representation immediately starting to commune with the Ghost in charge of base network security, Spider. Spider, creepily, had made his appearance that of a massive, eight legged, black, spikey arachnid.

If Talon-3 would have been in charge of classifying that particular versapiens, his verdict would have been, "Not sexy. Not at _all_. Urgh." But then Talon-3 was mildly, but bizarrely and irrationally, arachnaphobic who could get oddly hysterical about the thought of spiders crawling around on him despite the fact that they were literally harmless to his metallic skin.

Talon-1 nodded to Talon-2 and they followed Talon-3 into the thick. Mingling to gather intel was never something to be underestimated.

* * *

When Bumblebee turned up fit to burst about news of a _human trine_ showing up Jazz couldn't even bring himself to be overmuch surprised. Between the versapiens _Dyad_ , the dazzling array of variation in their particular race even just on base, and the fact that they had fliers, trining of human "seekers" wasn't exactly surprising.

Bumblebee's memory was illuminating.

The hissing and wing display was highly familiar, but Jazz who had slightly more experience with seekers than Bumblebee knew that the display wasn't so much a threat display, but a _threatened_ display of very trapped feeling, very edgy seekers.

Despite the fact that they didn't have transformation capability, Jazz could imagine the sort of posturing that would have happened if they'd had cybertronian frames instead of the frames that were so vulnerable on the ground. They probably wouldn't have felt quite so threatened, actually.

Jazz actually felt kind of sorry for them, considering Bumblebee had probably driven them to spark arrest with his unexpected appearance.

Jazz chuckled, wondering if they were the same kind of flighty glitches as cybertronian seekers tended to be, but considering the enlisted soldier had put himself between the trine leader and Bumblebee, at the very least they had more self control. A cybertronian trine leader had a high chance of attacking the soldier for getting in the way. Not to mention that it was extremely odd to see a trine willingly underground. It was even odder than seeing the other fliers that didn't read as "seeker" hanging in a base that was buried under tons of rock, which was one thing that invariably tended to make fliers twitchy.

~Prowl?~ Jazz commed the tactician.

~Yes, Jazz?~

~I've got something I want you to see.~ He sent the memory. ~What do you think?~

~...Seekers,~ Prowl replied slowly, ~but not cybertronian.~

~That's what I thought,~ Jazz said, ~It can't be a coincidence.~

~I agree,~ Prowl said, ~Based on the data you have collected, there are just too many similarities between our social structures and the ones that are showing up echoed in the natives. Even if the humans _were_ organic.~

Warriors sparked. _Dyad_. A young Lord High Protector and a young Prime. Seekers. Trines.

Jazz could see them, even if the peoples of Earth didn't seem to understand it, even if they somehow managed to accept it despite their lack of understanding.

It was _alien_... but it was also strikingly familiar.

The question was: What happened to the Allspark that would _cause_ all of this?


	7. Back Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Waiting to hear news of a loved one wears on you. Worse than hearing they are dead is the _not knowing_. Is he alive? Is he dead? Or is it worse?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter. And Sarah is a mama bear BAMF with a BFG and she knows how to use it.

Sarah took a steadying breath and refused to fidget as she stood outside the office where she, and Monique, were waiting to be called in.

"It'll be okay, honey," Monique said, the small Natural lady attempting to reassuring, but Sarah wasn't sure if she was attempting to reassure Sarah or herself, "no news is good news. They'd have already said if they were dead."

It had been months though, with no word. She had last spoken to him not even a week before little Annabelle had emerged out into the greater world, apologizing for not being able to be there because he had just been assigned another mission, and then... nothing. It had been total communications blackout. For a while she had even been afraid that the entire base had been wiped out when the entire part of the web where the base had been simply went dead between one moment and the next. It had been an excruciatingly long hour before the gaping hole in the network had whispered to life again only to begin broadcasting avoidance signals.

"And maybe they called us here to finally give us that news," Sarah said softly.

"And maybe not," Monique replied.

Sarah gave a small huff. There was no way to know until someone actually _said_ something.

Almost a whole hour later, the door opened and a little Pidge waved Sarah inside but stopped Monique from following. Sarah stopped dead just inside the door all the same.

Seeing just who was there was a shock.

Instead of Mariposa sitting behind the war frame scale desk or Butterfly fluttering about at Melody's side like the Lady's personal portable rainbow as the Lady went about her business, there was the very _last_ person she was expecting to see.

Even if they were, technically, different branches and completely different chains of command Sarah quickly snapped off a crisp salute to the blue versapiens, "General Siren, sir!" Sarah might be a flyer but she spent far too much time jumping between Angels and Squids dodging toasters to not have a healthy respect for the people who controlled resupply while she was out doing blue-water ops.

"At ease, Diver," she said.

The sniper slowly lowered her hand, "Thank you, sir."

For a long moment the general just looked at her which didn't help her nerves. At all. It wasn't every day that you got called into a meeting with the big brass and the only reason she wasn't a complete mess was the fact that General Siren _was_ Navy. Sarah was one of Air Commander Falcos' and her husband's "branch", if it could be called, that was the hands-off bastard brainchild of General Behemot and Commander Eidolon with a few sprinkles of input from her own Air Commander and then sent off into the wilds of war wherever toasters needed to be hunted down and killed, to succeed, or fail as chance, or intel, would have it.

General Siren was _Navy_.

Sarah wasn't.

General Siren didn't have anything to do with Sarah besides being the driving force behind the creation of Diver series.

 _Sarah_ was the one who had seen the possibility of the larger versapiens style frame and the versatility and had pointed to it and said: Sniper.

"You have no doubt been wanting information about what happened in Panama," Siren said eventually.

"Yes sir," Sarah said, fists clenching. No bad news. No bad news. Please let it not be bad news...

"Your husband is alive," the blue general said.

"And well?" Sarah asked. Alive didn't mean _whole_ , and... there were things that were worse than death.

"And well," General Siren nodded, causing Sarah to breathe a sigh of relief as the weight of _not knowing_ let up, "Your last communication was before his last mission, correct?"

"Yes sir," Sarah said. It had been before Annabelle had been decanted. Little 'Belle _would_ get to meet her father. Sarah drew a ragged breath of relief. She had worried, _dreaded_ , that she would be told that her baby girl would never have that opportunity.

Siren grinned, "I have to say that your man has got quite the track record." Sarah blinked. What? "He's gone and managed to pull another miracle out of his ass for us. His team found us a ship full of enemies of our not so friendly toasters."

Sarah gawked.

She quickly snapped her mouth closed, mind racing.

"Allies?" she asked hopefully. Enemy of my enemy was nice in concept but it left far too many gaps that could be taken advantage of. Not to mention that the general had not said what kind of toaster haters Will had found or if they hated humans as much as the toasters did.

"So far it looks promising, however..." Siren paused, "We are going to be hosting a small group of two or three of them, down here. There's just one problem."

Sarah frowned, "What is it?"

Siren gave a half smile that was more of a grimace, "They are the same race as our friends, the toasters. Cybertronian."

Sarah stopped, hands twitching for her gun. Her brain froze, stunned into deadlock by the thought of "my baby" and "my husband" and "enemy" and " _not_ enemy?" and "they are not laying _one_ finger on _my_ family—I'll fucking kill them first".

The blue versapiens nodded, "Exactly. Now. Captain Lennox, I apologize in advance for asking this of you, but will you allow these _mechs_ into your household for the time that they are our guests here?"

Toasters.

_In her house._

Fucking _hell_.

Sarah set her jaw, "Yes sir."

One step out of line and she would shoot them dead.

If they got near her baby she would rip them to pieces and teach them the error of their ways. With extreme prejudice.

From the grim look on the general's face, she knew exactly what Sarah was thinking. And approved.

Good.

Because Sarah was determined that she would be a good mother. Letting _toasters_ , even supposed promising ally toasters hurt her baby was _not_ in the cards.

"Lieutenant," the general said, "You will receive further information on your 'guests' when it is closer to their arrival. And ours. At Cape Verde."

Sarah's eyes narrowed. "We're moving because of them," she said shrewdly.

General Siren smirked, "Did I say that?"

"No sir," Sarah said, the mother bear in her was appeased. Slightly. If the Queen of the Seas was taking this seriously then she could grit her teeth and bear it. With her _real_ rifle in hand.

They couldn't say that she hadn't given them fair warning then.


End file.
